Valen turned back to the heavy oak door, his fingertips running across the tiny lines gouged on the door frame. Little by little, they stretched higher and higher, closely spaced at first, then further widening until they finally stopped near Valen’s shoulder.

Those marks had kept track of Kalee, as she grew.

As Valen stared at them, he couldn’t help but think of another set of tallies, carved across the sharp sides of two bloody twin swords. He wondered what Androma Racella was doing right now; whether she’d seen Nor’s message, and started her journey toward Arcardius.

Valen knew Andi. She had her faults—too many to count—but she was fiercely loyal. She’d come.

It was only a matter of time.

With a sigh, Valen opened the door and wheeled himself inside Kalee’s old room.

It felt like a dwelling for Kalee’s ghost. The lamps were off, but the night sky cast its own light, fully visible now through a wall of windows. Many of the rooms in Averia were designed this way, the better to see the beauty of the manicured grounds beyond. It would be dawn, soon.

As he surveyed the space, Valen saw Kalee as a memory, fully formed and perfect.

She stood before her wall of windows, wearing a gown of all white, dancing as the sky shed moonlight on her ringlet curls.

A flash of bright light.

A screech that sounded like metal colliding against rock.

Then Androma Racella appeared in the room, bathed in Kalee’s blood. Her hands dripped with it. Her eyes, silver as the stars, were cold enough to balance out the crackling heat of her electric blades.

Valen hissed between his teeth, and shoved all thoughts of Kalee and Androma away.

This room was empty. Absent of any life at all. It was Valen himself, and his cursed past, that brought back the ghosts.

He remembered Andi telling him once that the dead taunted her. The memory of Zahn taunted Valen now, too. The snap decision. That final, fateful push and shove, and the gunshot going off. Nor’s panicked scream, as she realized Zahn had been shot.

Valen’s own horror as he realized he’d been the one who caused it.

Why could the bullet not have gone elsewhere? Into the building, or another enemy, or even one of Androma’s crew, standing close by Nor’s side?

Would Nor ever forgive him? She had to. They were a team, the Solis siblings—his power, and her plan. Valen wasn’t sure what he would do if she didn’t.

White sheets covered all of Kalee’s belongings. They looked ghostly in the light of the moons, even more so with the frost coating the windowpanes. He wheeled himself across the room, staggered to a standing position and tore the sheets from Kalee’s four-poster bed. Dust rained down from above, landing on his shoulders like flakes of snow.